A group of local 7th and 8th graders are working hard to save the monarch butterfly, and they're getting their hands dirty doing it.

Students from Gamble Montessori are spending a few days a Morgan's Riverside Campground in Warren County.

Aside from camping, cooking their own food, and hauling water, they're also learning about nature and giving back to the community.

Their community service project is to create a Monarch butterfly waystation.

"Monarchs need hopping places called waystations. I'd like to establish these up and down the Little Miami River," Dirk Morgan said. "That gives the Monarch a place to land overnight. They have to take a break. They eat the nectar, and then they head on their migration, to and from Mexico."

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Monarch's numbers are declining due to loss of habitat and reduction of milkweed, their primary food source.

Students spent hours tearing out honeysuckle bushes and converting an area near the river into a waystation.

"They're going to be planting milkweed seeds as well as some butterfly bushes. Hopefully the garden is going to be beautiful. Dirk has told us he's going to get a plaque and we hope our kids as they grow up can bring their own children back and those things and show this is work that they did, that they provided for our community," Krista Taylor of Gamble Montessori told WLWT.

As the students were digging and planting, they took time to yell out the school's motto, "Always leave a place better than we found it."